Yesterday afternoon, Harvest Bible Chapel Palos issued a formal statement on the church’s official Facebook page. The statement is signed by “Pastor Ryan [Hall] on behalf of the elders of Harvest Palos.” In additon to serving as the Senior Pastor, Ryan Hall is a Board Member of the Great Commission Collective. The statement reads as follows:

20 Responses to Ryan Hall, Lead Pastor of Harvest Bible Chapel Palos Issues as a Statement

I came across a very eye opening article, that is so relevant to the huge debacle at HBC Chicago. It was published by The Wartburg Watch, written by Mel Lawrenz, who is writing about the recent crisis at Willow Creek Church, South Barrington. The article is titled: The Willow Creek Crisis- A Time of Reckoning for All Leaders- Opinion by Mel Lawrenz.
As a former elder at the HBC Elgin campus, and 14 years of attending Harvest, ( I left right after Easter Sunday service in 2013, which to me was the height of the arrogance spewed by James), I can emphatically say that every “Untruth” written about in this article is spot on. The article describes to the letter, what’s been happening at HBC, and why!

I want to be quick to note, that just like Matt Stowell had indicated in his recent post, I became part of the problem! Instead of speaking up when I felt I should have, I remained silent, something that gnawes at me till this day! In 2010, I had become part of the ‘facade’ elder board. The radio personality Mancow said it best recently, on his radio show, that elders are a bunch of ‘a– kissers’, and that there is no elder board, James IS the elder board! You can listen to radio radio talk show yourself, posted very recently under his name on this website.

If you get a chance, I would urge you to read this article, that outlines and describes seven “Untruths”, that many Christian leaders promote, and rule the church accordingly, to the detriment of the sheep, who in most if not all cases, are clueless.

I had mentioned in my recent FB post, that nothing, short of what Willow Creek church did, will fix the problem at HBC Chicago campuses, or any other HBC that is being run the same way. The entre leadership, from top to bottom, the entire elder board, and all campus pastors who are in James hip pocket, need to resign and leave, permanently, and let the people have a fresh start!

Man…I don’t want to be that guy…but there is that RIDICULOUS unbiblical logo again-that is tattooed all over James MacDonald and many of “his” pastors, that silly vertical church concept/brand. Remember the MacDonald quote “Congregationalism is from Satan” that gave rise to this unholy style of worldly church governance. It bothers me about all these GCC churches that they are supposedly separated from the machine but they keep this logo and they keep the DNA that built them. Nothing in the book of Acts looks anything like what I see in this. “By their fruits ye shall know them”. Well the tree is bearing some real rotten fruit right now. It’s not enough. The concept needs to be torched and called out for what it is- unbiblical. Return to Acts. Remove the worldly business style of governance. Take the authority away from the senior pastor and put it back in the hands of the elders and congregation. Bold statement here and I applaud it but it’s only a small step in the right direction.

Let us hope that the Harvest Vertical brand symbol “buck stripes with a pointy head” gets relegated to the trash heap and replaced by the cross.
(PS on a side note why did MacDonald pick the military buck stripes? Neither James MacDonald, Luke MacDonald, nor Landon MacDonald served a day in military service)

Ryan can say these things, but he and his church exhibit many of the same characteristics. Autocratic leadership with centralized power in the pastor; counseling at least one wife to stay with an abusive husband; not allowing parents to worship with their children, and more.

This! /\ While it seems that James has been removed, which is not the case as he is still getting paid and will continue to be paid from the Naples location, every single Harvest plant and many of those that have left the association of Harvest still have the toxic cancerous governance, structure which allowed James to behave so terribly, and they retain the leaders who were trained by James through the fellowship program!!!!!! This is not going to end just by James’ career ending, even if he were removed from the payroll and never spoke or wrote again.

The duplication process that allowed Harvest to plant over 100 churches will allow others to behave the same way, but now they wont be easily identified as with the Harvest name or logo. Should every HBC church get renamed, the structure of governance and the training the leadership recieved will breed the same issues with unaccountable pastors, zero financial accountability and mostly young pastors who have been given massive amounts of power with very little mentorship in ministry but years worth of examples on how to manage the business of people through their very own harvest franchise. And when I say manage people I mean manipulate and control.

While I appreciate and agree with most of what this Ryan has stated, none of these statements coming out is going to remove the cancer unless every HBC church restructures itself with a new governance structure and financial reform with accountability and gives public statements as to how they plan to protect their congregation from the same situation, starting with congregational governance, quarterly financial statements and new personnel training that focuses on biblical ministry and not manipulative crowd control.

Is Highpoint Church (formerly HBF Naperville) part of GCC? Before the announced split, we drove past the church and a couple of it’s own plants and all were renamed Highpoint. We looked it up, and they made a very lame, unbelievable excuse that because the names were so similar, people would accidentally go to the wrong location for events. Ok, so you have a (paid) ticket to an event, with an address on it, right? All pertinent information… and you accidentally go to the wrong location? So much so that the church needs to rename itself? In this day and age of GPS? Really? Really? C’mon… do they really think people are that dumb?!?

Harvest Palos has children’s ministry opportunities during worship for birth – 5th grade. I know of two families personally who were asked to leave worship (with their children) because they wanted their young children (pre-k) to stay with them. The grounds given were that children would be a distraction to others in worship, and worship is too important to interrupt. One, a dad alone with his son, had no where to go since he was also barred from the cry room.

I find it interesting that so many are saying he is going to be completely void of preaching, yet he has his sweet little gig in Naples’s, Florida, where he has subsequently fired the resident Pastor Seacrest for the egregious sin of disagreeing with James and the Elders.

Does HBC Palos realize Janes is STILL a Pastor. STILL preaching?!? Where is the discipline?!?

In the real world, JMac would have been fired long ago, together with his hand-picked elders. Someone doing this for 20+ years is not going to change. All the hang-wringing in the world will not alter Jmac’s personality, character, and modus operandi. Just another indication that the “age of the gentiles” is ending soon, and the focus of eternity will revert to the “Chosen People,” i.e. Israel; then what Jmac does or doesn’t do won’t matter at all.

Didn’t jimmy EXCOMUNICATE members. It’s time to EXCOMUNICATE him, ricky d and all the elders on all the fake boards they set up. we need to go back and read 1 Samuel 2
The Lord Warns Eli
A man of God soon visited Eli at Shiloh and delivered a stern rebuke from the Lord: “Why kick ye at [treat with scorn] my sacrifice? … Honourest thy sons above me? … Them that honour me I will honour, and they that despise me shall be lightly esteemed. … And this shall be a sign unto thee, that shall come upon thy two sons, … in one day they shall die both of them” (1 Sam. 2:29–34). The Lord had spoken plainly to Eli: restrain or remove your sons or they will die. So did Eli act? No. He continued to allow his sons to work at the tabernacle (see 1 Sam. 4:1–5).
If I was jimmy and ricky I’d be scared to death for chastisement of my children!